Leaving Bath we headed Northwards towards Wales. I wasn’t quite sure what this piece of the trip was going to be like as it didn’t seem like we had a nice route (at least for the bit to where we crossed the Severn). Oddly, there doesn’t seem to be a single source of truth for bike routes in the UK… Anyway, it was a nice enough route until Bristol, but then we did run into a few larger roads which weren’t quite as much fun. Only a few km’s really, but enough to put a dent in your happiness levels.

Still, nice to see our crossing for the first time, and once we’d stopped for an ice-cream and a drink our morale was on the up again.

We stayed at a nice AirBnB in Caldicott. We were the first people to stay there, so you never quite know what you’re going to get. Still, it worked out fine. I felt for the guy though, commuting to Bath every day, probably a good 90 minutes each way. If at all possible, I want to stay within biking distance of wherever I work.

From Caldicott it was on to my Aunt and Uncles place, a little bit outside of Cardiff. Hot day on the bike. In fact, the weather in Wales was almost entirely dry! It was lovely to see Rosemary & Sam. We went for a nice walk through the “physic garden” of the local village. We saw a bunch of kids playing Pokeymon-Go. This game has quite literally taken the world by storm. In some ways I reckon it’s a good thing, as it gets people outside and interacting with each other. There are worse things. It was unfortunate that we just missed all my cousins who had been staying – Aidan over from OZ, Hugh from the US, and Anna up from London. Annoying, but just bad timing with getting from A to B on the bike.

Immediate thoughts on biking in Wales: the bike lanes weren’t quite as nice as in the UK, it’s a heck of a lot hillier, and the people seemed a bit friendlier / kinder to bikes on the road. Wales is definitely not a flat country, that’s for sure. Would I go bike here again? Hell yes – this trip we’re going to catch the boat at Fishguard, next time it’d be fun to get to Holyhead and get the boat from there. The reason we didn’t is that I was nervous of the brakes on the tandem. They’re basically just regular brakes (like you’d have on a road bike). Sometimes going down a (steep) hill it’s impossible to actually stop the bike. There’s quite a bit of weight between Maaike, me and the luggage. Mostly me and the luggage of course ;) If there was one change I’d make it’d be to change the brakes to be disk brakes. Still, it has been SUCH fun so far.. the tandem has definitely been a highlight.

Oh, and a word on bike gates. There are a lot of them. An awful lot of them. Some are far harder to get through than others. On one particular gate (the one I’m wheeling the bike through vertically), someone had written “This is a shit gate” and a follow-up commentator had said “yes, it really is” ;)

We had a nice run from Mike’s up to Bath. It’s a really nice part of the world, lots of thatched cottages and we found a route into Bath along the Canals which was great.

My cousin Lucy kindly offered their place to stay in. Unfortunately they were away in Edinburgh for the weekend so we actually didn’t get to see them :(

Bath itself is a very pretty town. Lucy had recommended a few things – Bath Abbey and the skyline walk being two of the highlights. The walk was especially nice, 10km or so with some nice views, but just good to get out and stretch the legs.

We also visited the Roman Baths. They are worth seeing, though quite touristy. There’s not tooooooo much of it which is still original, but you can see the way they heated the rooms, the old lead pipes are pretty impressive, and the leftover stonework.

I did enjoy the “curses“. The old way of cursing someone was to write it down on a lead curse and then throw it into the baths. Wonderfully specific in their details – for example:

Docimedis has lost two gloves and asks that the thief responsible should lose their minds [sic] and eyes in the goddess’ temple.

…so long as someone, whether slave or free, keeps silent or knows anything about it, he may be accursed in (his) blood, and eyes and every limb and even have all (his) intestines quite eaten away if he has stolen the ring or been privy (to the theft).

Love it!

Yip, Bath was a great stop on our tour :)

We had a little cross country on our way to Mike the second day. Still, we got there in one piece, to the lovely area of Wiltshire called “The Donheads”. It had been a long time since I’d seen Mike and Liz so I was really looking forward to it.

We generally just chatted, ate lots of great food. Helping out proved hard, though we were allowed to do the dishes after we gave out for not being allowed to do anything useful!

We did a couple of short trips, one to a place called Stourhead where we did a tour of the (National Trust) gardens and grounds.

Interesting place. Basically a rich banking families former house. One of them still lives there. We learned an interesting thing about the National Trust though: they have reciprocal arrangements with a couple of societies, in particular the “Historical Society of New Zealand”. Now, it costs ~ 240NZD for a years membership to the National Trust, but only $100 for a membership to the NZ Historical society. If we ever do this sort of trip again, I will be sure to take out an NZ membership!

I loved the ice room. Basically this was a rich persons play thing and a way of showing off in the summer months (cocktails, certain deserts etc.)

There were quite a lot of “folly’s”, mostly Italian based, as that was all the rage at the time. The grotto was most ornate. We didn’t get to see inside the Temple of Apollo unfortunately. Hey ho.

This (in my opinion) ugly looking thing used to belong to a Pope. It’s full of drawers. Worth many millions I was told. It certainly stood out in the room anyway. No one knows how much it was bought for.

We also took in a walk around Mike’s vege & flower garden. He certainly has very green fingers. I loved the “rose tree”. Basically you take an apple tree (or some tree) and then get a climbing rose to use the tree as a frame. Then the rose grows up to be huge as it takes over the entire tree.

Thomas came down from London to spend a bit more time with us, lovely as always to see him. We visited “old Wardour castle” with him. It was the same castle as used at the start of Robin Hood prince of thieves. Actually well worth the trip, great audio guide – well worth a visit if you’re in the area.

It was lovely to stay with Mike and Liz, and to catch up with my cousin Bridget, but all too soon it was time to leave for the next stage in the adventure.

We spent a lovely couple of days in Oxford with my cousin Catherine. She took us for a walk around the town and past some of the lovely old colleges. This first one with the long queue is Kings, I think, at least its the one where the Hogwarts dining hall was filmed, so it gets quite a few tourists. We met a lovely gentleman who pointed us in the direction of one of the colleges. We thanked him, and he said “it’s a privilege”. We definitely felt like we were in genteel England at that point (or somewhere in the middle of a Bronte novel)

My cousin Thomas came up from London for a day too, which was great. He Cath and I are quite close, as there’s only 12 months between us so we’d hang out whenever there were family gatherings. It it the downside of living in NZ – not getting to see as much of such fine fine folk as I would otherwise like to.

I also caught up with cousins (and an Uncle) on the Davey side too which was extra cool. My Uncle was over from South Africa, so its always special to see him – just perfect timing really.

Finally, we visited the Pitt-Rivers museum. It’s an odd sort of museum, everything organised by category (rather than country / time / anything else). I definitely enjoyed the games area. It was odd seeing quite a few Maori artefacts amongst the collection. One wonders how they were acquired etc. I mean it’s nice that other people get to enjoy them, but there can be quite a lot of feeling mixed up in these things.

All in all a lovely stay in Oxford. Nice watching Andy Murray win at Wimbledon too.

And then it was time to leave London and head towards Oxford. Canals again came to the rescue in avoiding traffic. We decided to split our journey to Oxford, 110km or something was a bit longer than we wanted to do in one day, so we headed to Cookham (68 km).

I would guess that for all but 10km we were completely off road and on canals. There were a few spots where the road was little more than a very bumpy dirt track, but still, got there in the end – and with no punctures.

We used AirBnB for the evening and were happy with the place we stayed. Headed out for pizza for the evening, yum.

The next day, we continued on to Oxford

There were a surprising number of “bridleway” paths (for horses) on our route. Planning these things on Google Maps you can never be quite sure what you’re going to end up with sometimes ;)

As we arrived into Oxford, slowing coming up a small hill, we heard a loud BANG! Never a particularly good sound to hear on a bike. The rear wheel had completely deflated and the cause was obvious (ruptured tyre wall)

We were super lucky that it happened in Oxford. Anywhere else in the preceding 50km would have been a pain, as there really wasn’t anywhere to get a replacement, and I didn’t have anything for patching up a tyre.. In the event, it was a short 10 minute walk to the nearest bike shop, where I bought a replacement tyre, this one with Kevlar walls.. I think the tyres that were originally on the bike were great, but, more designed for road cycling around, rather than long-distance touring. Still, it only cost us an hour or so, and then we were on to see my cousin Catherine.